IBM wants to empower its partner network in Asia Pacific

“IBM wants to continue to build a channel that is of high integrity and high compliance. We are going to continue to make sure that we are very transparent with how we work and there is a trusted partnership with partners,” said Chetan Krishnamurthy, Asia Pacific President of Ecosystem and Digital Sales at IBM.

During IBM’s third quarter earnings call recently, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna said the last quarter witnessed “good traction” in the enterprise AI business. Specifically, IBM’s profits grew US$1 billion from quarter to quarter with a mix of consulting and software placing the company in an “early leadership position.”

While the figures are based on global revenue, there is no denying that the Asia Pacific region has been a strong contributor to IBM's positive growth. In fact, enterprises in Asia Pacific continue to increase investments in emerging technologies. IDC predicts the region to see AI and generative AI investments to reach US$110 billion by 2028.

This signals a huge opportunity not only for IBM but for other tech vendors in the region as well. The challenge now is how can IBM be able to make the most out of the market opportunity. It is important to note that the competition tech vendors face in the Asia Pacific region is rather unique given the diverse cultures and strategies enterprises have.

The increase demand for AI use cases also means that businesses will be opting for a hybrid cloud approach, given the high need to process data to generate the best results. For IBM, the opportunities in AI and hybrid cloud in the region requires them to ensure they have a strong partner ecosystem that is capable of meeting customer demand and delivering the best product.

The AI Readiness Barometer: AI Landscape study, conducted by Ecosystm on behalf of IBM, examines AI adoption trends across ASEAN, including use cases with the biggest impact for specific business units. The study revealed that while 85% of ASEAN organisations acknowledge the power of AI to help businesses achieve strategic goals, only 17% have a well-defined AI strategy. This leaves most organisations without a clear roadmap to success.

The study also revealed that hybrid, multi-cloud strategies offer businesses flexibility in storing their data, but only 33% of technology and business leaders trust that AI solutions can be built and managed wherever their organizations store their data. This lack of trust hinders the widespread adoption of AI solutions.

According to Chetan Krishnamurthy, Asia Pacific President of Ecosystem and Digital Sales at IBM, any organization that undertakes a generative AI or AI project, it will have an organizational-wide impact. While some organizations may focus on a specific use case like virtual agent or AI assistant, most businesses are looking at organization wide implementation.

“When an enterprise is considering implementing generative AI use cases across the organization, there are opportunities in the data space because these enterprises are continuing to build their data lakehouse. But how do we get both structured and unstructured data together? Some organizations have made a lot of progress, but many are only beginning to do it. There’s a lot of focus on where the data is coming from, like trust, governance and lineage.

This becomes an opportunity. At the same time, there are also the cybersecurity aspects that need to be considered. These are massive opportunities for hybrid cloud platforms. Some enterprises are using AWS, while some are using Microsoft. There are also those that also rely on hyperscalers.

“At the same time, they also have on-premises implementations that they've invested in. So, the whole narrative then becomes a modernization. How do you get all these pieces together? Hence, the opportunity becomes a little bit bigger and more transformational in nature. And this is where IBM is hoping to prepare partners with the right package,” said Krishnamurthy.

The IBM Partner Plus program

Enabling this is the IBM Partner Plus program. Launched in 2023, IBM Partner Plus was designed to simplify the partner experience and processes as well as promote collaboration and innovation. The success of the program has led to IBM introducing a dedicated Service Track that provides Service Partners with unique benefits, co-creation support, and coverage.

Looking at Asia Pacific, in March this year, IBM set up a Synergy Lounge in Tech Mahindra’s Singapore campus to assist enterprises in extracting value from emerging technologies and is working with partners such as JCO Analytics to advance AI and gen AI adoption for companies.

In the Philippines, IBM is collaborating with PT&T Corp to strengthen the security posture for ACEN, the listed energy platform of the Ayala Group. IBM also announced that its software portfolio is expanding globally to 92 countries in the AWS Marketplace including 17 markets in Asia Pacific, such as Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, and India.

According to Krishnamurthy, the focus right now is on the hybrid cloud platform. Specifically, there are “three Ps” that make the process work – the process, the platform and the partners.

For businesses, the process is basically that they want to be able to work with several vendors because of their partnership and the way the platform has been built. While AI is a core part or the key for this platform, Krishnamurthy stated that automation and security are important components of the framework as well.

The platform is the Partner Plus program. Since the Partner Plus program was launched, Krishnamurthy mentioned that there's been significant improvements and enhancements that's been made to the program.

“For example, we launched a service motion specifically focused on GSIs and RSIs, which is a big part of the go-to-market strategy. We have a big go-to-market for resellers which are the value-added resellers and the value-added distributors. We’ve also focused on building the platform where we're working with ISVs, startups, VCs, incubators and accelerators. All of these is enabled by the Partner Plus program, which I think in some ways comes with both being able to sell together with IBM,”

The partners, which he feels is the most important component is the ability to make partners add value and ability by creating solutions and embed IBM’s stack into their portfolio.

“So, you've got the program, you've got the platform, and then you've got the partners. And in the middle of all this is the client, which in all ways is the most important component. It starts with the client-first approach. From there, all three are coming together and harmonizing is the way to categorize our go-to-market.”

In Asia Pacific, Krishnamurthy revealed that they have done a lot of recruitment of partners across the region. They’ve also done a lot of activation of partners across APAC. The activation partners would be having IBMers work with the partners to understand the benefits and programs better. This also includes skilling and enabling them from a sales perspective.

“It is all about how you continue to drive volume and velocity in the channel. How do you build deals that are actually meaningful, impactful for the partners? Because for partners, they need to have a revenue stream that they need to generate, which is most paramount for them. That’s how we’ve kind of partnered in the region but it's still a work in progress and there’s definitely been significant improvements since Partner Plus was launched,” mentioned Krishnamurthy.

Another interesting perspective Krishnamurthy highlighted is the focus on transparency and compliance within the channel. IBM has the highest level of integrity in terms of how it operates as an organization and Krishnamurthy believes the Partner Plus program gives them the ability to work transparently with the channel partners in a very clear programmatic way that maintains the highest standards of integrity.

The partner perspective

From the partners’ perspective, Krishnamurthy mentioned that the feedback they’ve received revealed that partners appreciate the visibility on how they can collaborate with IBM.

“Partners appreciate the ease of use of the platform and the transparency as well. We spend a lot of time on lead sharing and deal passing. Partners also appreciate the opportunities from IBM which allows them to generate their own opportunities with co-marketing,” he said.

Moreover, the partners also appreciate some of the marketing kits that IBM has made available. There are partner marketing kits that they can build and run campaigns based off of these packages that have been made available to them. These are available in different languages, as it is very important to localize as much as possible to suit what a country needs and not just the market.

At the same time, partners are also helping customers understand the technology and the ability to generate business outcomes using the technology. IBM is working on skilling the partners to be able to understand and deploy the technology.

Krishanamurthy also mentioned that IBM is continuously skilling the partner ecosystem, both technology-wise and use cases-wise. There are use case portals that IBM has developed where partners can access use cases and do simple demos for customers on their own.

“It kind of becomes three-tier. You have self-service, then you have skilling and enablement with partners and then we co-sell with the partners in places where they can talk to the clients. In some cases, because the technologies are new, there is always a discussion on the cost effectiveness of technology or what is the ROI from the technology,” Krishnamurthy explained.

With that said, Krishnamurthy pointed out that IBM wants to continue to build a channel that is of high integrity and high compliance. IBM is going to continue to make sure that they are very transparent with how they work and there is a trusted partnership with partners.

“To summarize, we have the partner ecosystem. We also want to bring several partners together to build solutions in a very symbiotic way. And finally, we want to get more simplistic as we go along so that we can actually build scale and the partners will feel confident to work at a pace and rate that may or may not be possible today. The platform will continue to evolve and there'll be new innovations. We want to continue to be known as a vendor that stands by our partners for our clients. We also want to continue beyond that, especially in this AI, automation, security era. That's where we want to take this engine to,” concluded Krishnamurthy.